A nice video describing the Gyrojet pistol. For those who somehow don’t know, the Gyrojet was a neat idea that just didn’t work out: a rocket pistol. The pistols (and associated carbine) were lightweight structures since they were not subjected to the usual stresses associated with firearms… rather than one high pressure explosion, the Gyrojet rounds were propelled by an internal rocket motor that burned for 0.1 seconds or so. While that was great for the firearm, it sucked for the bullet itself: muzzle velocity for the pistol version was about ten feet per second. Over the next fifty or so feet the projectile continued to accelerate to something like 1200 feet per second, creating a nicely lethal round. But the initial slow velocity meant that wind would easily blow the thing around… accuracy was a bit of a joke.

I’ve often wondered about modernizing the Gyrojet. Apart from the lame fixed internal magazine the firearm itself is fine, but the projectiles could do with an update. A two-stage motor would seem the way to go… a very fast burning first stage so that the muzzle velocity is stepped up to something meaningful, several hundred feet per second. Additional ballistics work to assure something resembling accuracy. Advanced versions with laser seekers and thrust vectoring.

Even the best modern Gyrojet will almost certainly be an inferior weapon compared to a proper automatic. But it’d make a dandy weapon for the Space Marines… the minimal recoil and low system mass would be useful for guys in space suits. Plus, it’d just be durned cool. And let’s face it, that’s reason enough.

Someone “tried to nail a steel bottom plate to the concrete,” he said. “There was no connection [between] walls, there was no connection at the roof, and it was simply nailed to the concrete foundation.

Humans have been building structure for probably in excess of fifty thousand years. For most of that time, the structures were little more than igloos and tents and teepees and lean-tos, but somewhere around 6,000 or so years ago we started building permanent structures. In that time we’ve transitioned from simple piles of store to complex multi-story buildings of steel and concrete; in order to do that, we had to learn *how* to build such things. There is a science to it, an engineering to it, a set of math for it. There is, in the typically stern STEM worldview, right and many wrong ways to build buildings. And it appears that the chuckleheads who built some of the buildings trashed in the recent tornadoes decided to not bother with those 6,000 years of science and engineering. For reasons of greed, or laziness, or ignorance, or arrogance, or just plain stupidity, the builders apparently chose to go in a different direction. They are to structural engineers what faith healers are to doctors, what lunatics who think they’re superheros capable of flight are to aeronautical engineers. And yet many people still believe that STEM is over-rated, that what we need are more people who live in fluffy muddle-headedness:

The article is vague, but it seems that an electrician was working in or on an elevator and got squished or chopped or something. The result, as can be seen in the video, is a whole lot of blood pouring down the outside of the door.

It’s bad enough that modern cruise ships have to deal with ghost pirates and pirate ghosts, but now also ghost electricians (or electrician ghosts, I always forget how that works).

A NASA illustration (probably from 1964-66) showing the Saturn launch vehicles planned for the Apollo program. Note that the Saturn Ib shows the Lunar Module ascent stage, sans descent stage. This could have led to some interesting mission possibilities.

The full-rez scan has been made available to APR Patrons in the 2015-12 APR Extras Dropbox folder. If you’d like to help out and gain access to this and many other pieces of aerospace history, please check out the APR Patreon.

Carnegie Mellon Study Finds Eating Lettuce Is More Than Three Times Worse in Greenhouse Gas Emissions Than Eating Bacon

This study looks at things like lettuce and eggplant that require a whole lot of water and tending to grow.

Vegans and the like often talk about how raising food-critters is inefficient because they need to be fed corn and whatnot that could feed people directly. The thing that occurs to me is that they don’t *necessarily* need to eat plants that could feed humans. Sure, in feedlots cows and such get fed highly nutritious (i.e. processed) feed… but out in the west they tend to graze free-range on stuff like grass. Grass requires no effort on the part of humans to grow. No water, no planting, no fertilizing, no nothing. So at least in that case, feeding cattle costs approximately nothing, and in fact is a *better* use of the land for feeding people than growing crops would be.

Well, duh. Time passes and it has some rather inevitable effects, including making people look older. But apparently a lot of people have been complaining about and/or mocking Fishers appearance in “The Force Awakens.”

So Fisher tweeted this:

Please stop debating about whetherOR not👁aged well.unfortunately it hurts all3 of my feelings.My BODY hasnt aged as well as I have.Blow us👌🏼

Remember the spoiled rich kid who got drunked up, killed four people on the road, and got sentenced not to prison but to probation because he suffered from “affluenza?” Remember how a few days ago he and his mother vanished, violating said probation and causing the authorities to start a manhunt to find him? Well, they found him, down Mexico way.

That’s nice and all, knowing that he will be extradited back to the US and will face ten years in prison. But what will really put a smile on your face is this photo of Ethan Couch released by the Jalisco state prosecutors office:

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]